Tegan and Sarah Showcase

06 February 2013

For our first showcase of 2013, Warner Music UK contracted JHL to take care of full technical production for Tegan & Sara’s London performance and playback in front of a specially invited audience in support of their new album “Heartthrob”, which on its release, headed straight to the top of the US charts.

The venue chosen for the duo’s performance was the Kingpin Suite at the Bloomsbury Lanes Bowling Club. Given the confines of the venue Tegan & Sara performed a stripped back set, accompanied by guitar, keyboards, bass and drums.

Pepin and his team – Dave Nelson (backline), Dan Chester & Robin Tombs(audio), Kevin Ludlam & Rick Markee-Hicks (lighting), installed a Litedeck stage extension to the existing house stage to give the band some space to work, along with a distributed QSC speaker system and a lighting system that included Robe Robin washlights for the stage and Mac 250+ fixtures loaded with Tegan & Sara Gobos playing around the room. Backline included Fender and Ashdown combos and a Gibson J45 acoustic guitar.

To meet the band’s requirements we provided AVID consoles for FOH (Profile) and monitors (SC48), Sennheiser G3 IEMs and a microphone package including Shure KSM9s for vocals. To suit the L-shaped venue we selected four KLA-112 powered line array cabinets and four KW181 powered sub bass cabinets to provide the main FOH sound. In addition we also included two KW122 mid high cabinets to give distributed coverage in the bowling lanes area.

It was nice to see Craig Brittain, whom we have regularly worked with on Michael Buble’s shows, at the monitor board. Marty Harrison (from the Killers) mixed FOH. The 40 minute show, mixing new and old songs, was received with a rapturous response by the audience, who also enjoyed bowling in the specially branded “Heartthrob” lanes.